One complaint tradebook artists have is the apparent "cap" on most Advance on Royalty contracts. Other markets certainly get paid better for the same amount of work. Consider the publishers’ side here too. They can only price a children’s book so high before it won’t sell at all. Then they have no capital to hire more artists/authors to do more books! It is a bit of a "labor of love" and one can hope for long lasting royalty payments if the book does well…and a higher advance on your second book with the same publisher.

Another underlying concern of some artists came up unexpectedly. There seems to be some discomfort at the highest earning levels (advertising and editorial) about the artist/agent relationship and fees. This completely surprised me. My experience as a rep in the Children’s Publishing Market has been a mostly wonderful, gratifying, more than comfortable and growing relationship with each of my artists. I truly think they know and appreciate how hard I work for them, and they know that I appreciate how hard they work at their profession. That open knowledge and acknowledgment may be the key. I believe the resulting artist/agent, and agent/agent dialogs that have followed the conference are most healthy!

As you see, the children’s illustration business has concerns of it’s own. I was so very glad I was there October ’99 to take it all in. I certainly hope to attend the next conference to speak for our market, and hope you will too! See you there…………?!